Dealers shed light on dark internet's drug trade

Users of the dark internet have shed light on their illegal trades on a growing online black market, which is helping more and more Australians to buy drugs and weapons.

A number of sites compete for the drug dollar online, selling drugs and sending them through the post to customers across the globe.

Customs spokesman Matt Wardell says the illegal trade has been linked to a spike in drug and weapons seizures at Australian mail centres.

"Certainly over the past 12 months, last financial year for example, we noticed a jump of more than 40 per cent in the number of small seizures made at mail centres across the country," he told 7.30.

"That's obviously got a lot to do with the increase in online trade.

"There's no question that it's become a more attractive way for people to try and import prohibited goods into the country - be they guns, be they drugs."

The Silk Road website - an eBay for drugs where encryption software allows vendors to be anonymously rated - is giving authorities a particular headache.

Bill, whose name has been changed, is a vendor on Silk Road who posts drugs to customers in Australia.

As a seller on the site he has access to some buyer information, and he says business Down Under is good.

There's no question that it's become a more attractive way for people to try and import prohibited goods into the country - be they guns, be they drugs.

Matt Wardell from Customs

"Australian traffic has double, tripled, quadrupled. There's more buyers, you can see them on the forums, you can see them on the posts," he said.

"Not only that, but in recent months there's been an American traffic explosion and that led to the site actually going down for a certain amount of time."

Nobody knows the identity or location of the founder of Silk Road, who goes under the pseudonym The Dread Pirate Roberts.

To protect its illegal trade, the site uses complex masking software and money exchanges.

Users have to download an encryption network, and the only money allowed is Bitcoin - an online currency that also hides purchasers' identities.

Computer expert Chris McDonald is not a Silk Road user but has studied the technology behind it and believes it is unbeatable.

"We're talking about tens of thousands, if not millions of years to break into these algorithms," he said.

"So for a small piece of data we have the traditional problem where if you spend more effort trying to break into an encrypted piece of data, then by the time you've successfully broken into the data, the data itself has no value."